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Around 1889, after years of training and travel, John Henry Twachtman purchased a seventeen-acre farm in Greenwich, Connecticut. During the next decade, he created some of his finest works there. Like the French Impressionists, whose style greatly influenced him, Twachtman found an inexhaustible source of subjects and inspiration in his local surroundings. Icebound illustrates a favorite theme: a stream descending from rocks to a serene pool surrounded by hemlock trees. In the hushed tranquility of this winter scene, Twachtman achieved a fine compositional balance between spontaneity and control. Movement is implied despite the frozen stillness suggested by the title and the muted tonal harmonies of the painting’s limited white and blue palette. Sinuous arabesques of white snow against blue water accentuate the stream’s descent. Thick brushstrokes of white and streaks of violet amid the blue of the water enliven the picture’s surface. Vivid red-orange leaves serve both as distinctive accents against the dominant white and as reminders of an autumnal life that has not surrendered to the relentless change of seasons.

New York, Clarke’s Art Rooms, Valuable Modern Paintings Which Includes the collection of John Forsythe, Esq…, November 6-7, 1913, no. 119.

New York, N.E. Montross Gallery, Exhibition of Pictures by Modern American Masters, April 17-May 5, 1917, no. 27.

Art Institute of Chicago, Special Exhibition of the Works in the Friends of American Art Collection, May 15-June 15, 1919.

Milwaukee Art Institute, Exhibition of Forty Paintings presented to the Art Institute of Chicago by the Friends of American Art, March 1-29, 1925, no. 37, ill. as Snow Bound.

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1933, no. 485, ill. as Snow Bound.

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, no. 462, as Snow Bound.

Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, November 16, 1939-January 7, 1940, no. 166, ill. pl. IV, as Snow-Bound.

Milwaukee-Downer College, Wisconsin, A Century of Landscape Painting by American Artists, 1851-1951, February 13-March 23, 1951, no. 8 as Snowbound.

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art, An Exhibition of American Paintings for a Professor of American Art, Charles Chetham and Charles H. Morgan, May-June, 1964, no. 13, ill. as Snowbound.